Neuchâtel, Switzerland public holidays 2026

2026 at a glance

• Republic Day falls on Sunday 1 March and is not moved; National Day falls on Saturday 1 August and is not moved, because Switzerland has no statutory substitute days.
• In 2026, public holidays fall on 5 weekdays in Neuchâtel, one fewer than in 2025.

Switzerland has no statutory substitute days, with one exception in Neuchâtel: when 1 January or Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, 2 January or 26 December is a holiday and is counted. Corpus Christi is a holiday in Le Landeron only and is not counted.

Public holidays in 2026

7 dates are counted as non-working in Neuchâtel in 2026; 5 of them fall on a weekday.

• not counted some employers only

Also observed by some

1 more day is a holiday only for some employers, sectors or areas in 2026. It is not counted as a non-working day here.

Working days and hours by month

Working days are Monday to Friday minus the counted holidays. Hours are shown for a 7.5-hour and an 8-hour working day.

• Jan 21 working days in January, 1 holiday
• Feb 20 working days in February
• Mar 22 working days in March, 1 holiday
• Apr 21 working days in April, 1 holiday
• May 19 working days in May, 2 holidays
• Jun 22 working days in June
• Jul 23 working days in July
• Aug 21 working days in August, 1 holiday
• Sep 22 working days in September
• Oct 22 working days in October
• Nov 21 working days in November
• Dec 22 working days in December, 1 holiday

Compare with the rest of Switzerland

Long weekends in 2026

Runs of three or more days off in a row without taking leave.

• 3 days Friday 3 April 2026 to Sunday 5 April 2026
• 3 days Friday 1 May 2026 to Sunday 3 May 2026
• 3 days Friday 25 December 2026 to Sunday 27 December 2026

Best days to take leave in 2026

The longest single break for each number of leave days, built around a public holiday.

Leave plans for the whole year

Non-overlapping breaks that give the most days off for a given number of leave days.

Try any budget from 1 to 30 days in the leave planner

Countdown

The days to the next holiday appear here when JavaScript is on.

The working days left this month and this year appear here when JavaScript is on.

Count working days between two dates

Calendar and data downloads

The subscription works in Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar. The CSV file also lists the days observed by some.

About public holidays in Neuchâtel

Neuchâtel has one of the most compact holiday lists in French-speaking Switzerland. Its Law on Sunday and public holidays (Loi sur le dimanche et les jours fériés, RSN 941.02) sets the days in article 3, and the SECO register of cantonal holidays that count as Sundays under the federal Labour Act agrees with it. Seven dates are counted here: New Year's Day, the founding of the Republic of Neuchâtel on 1 March, Good Friday, Labour Day on 1 May, Ascension, Christmas Day and 1 August, the only holiday observed throughout Switzerland.

Two further days are conditional. The law adds 2 January when 1 January is a Sunday, and 26 December when Christmas Day is a Sunday. This is not a substitute day in the usual sense, since nothing else is moved: the following day simply becomes a holiday in that one situation. Neither case arises in 2026 or 2027, so neither day is counted in either year, and the tally can differ from year to year more than in cantons whose lists are unconditional.

The 1 March holiday commemorates the proclamation of the republic in 1848 and is a fixed date. When it falls on a Saturday or Sunday, as it does in 2026, it is simply lost, in line with the Swiss rule that holidays are never moved to a weekday. Of the seven counted dates, five land on a weekday in 2026, which leaves 256 working days; 2027 has 257.

Easter Monday and Whit Monday are not holidays in Neuchâtel, which sets it apart from Jura and Schaffhausen, where both Mondays are counted. Corpus Christi is a holiday only in the municipality of Le Landeron, so it appears in the table with the label for that municipality and stays out of the total. The holiday library behind part of this site's raw data attaches Corpus Christi to the whole canton, but the cantonal rule is narrower, so the narrower reading is used here.

Compared with Jura, Neuchâtel has far fewer religious feasts. None of the saints' days of Catholic cantons appears in its list, and 1 May is a full holiday, unlike in Solothurn, where it covers only the afternoon.

Unofficial closing days that some employers or shops observe are not counted.

Source and last check

Dates are calculated with the python-holidays library 0.108 and checked against the official sources below. Last checked: 15 November 2026.

Sources

• https://rsn.ne.ch/DATA/program/books/rsne/pdf/94102.pdf
• https://www.seco.admin.ch/dam/de/sd-web/x5LtHPJdNis5/Anhang-Feiertage-Schweiz-Auszug-ArG-ArGV1-5-SECO-SB-2024-DE.pdf

How the counts are made